|
What does all this come to? What answer do we give to him
who, with no opinion of his own to assert, asks us to explain
this presence? And what do we say to the question whether there
is one only mode of presence of the entire soul or different
modes, phase and phase?
Of the modes currently accepted for the presence of one thing in
another, none really meets the case of the soul's relation to the
body. Thus we are given as a parallel the steersman in the ship;
this serves adequately to indicate that the soul is potentially
separable, but the mode of presence, which is what we are
seeking, it does not exhibit.
We can imagine it within the body in some incidental way- for
example, as a voyager in a ship- but scarcely as the steersman:
and, of course, too, the steersman is not omnipresent to the ship
as the soul is to the body.
May we, perhaps, compare it to the science or skill that acts
through its appropriate instruments- through a helm, let us say,
which should happen to be a live thing- so that the soul
effecting the movements dictated by seamanship is an indwelling
directive force?
No: the comparison breaks down, since the science is something
outside of helm and ship.
Is it any help to adopt the illustration of the steersman taking
the helm, and to station the soul within the body as the
steersman may be thought to be within the material instrument
through which he works? Soul, whenever and wherever it chooses to
operate, does in much that way move the body.
No; even in this parallel we have no explanation of the mode of
presence within the instrument; we cannot be satisfied without
further search, a closer approach.
|
|